Epilogue

Between the wave-ridge and the strandI let you forth in sight of land,Songs that with storm-crossed wings and eyesStrain eastward till the darkness dies;Let signs and beacons fall or stand,5And stars and balefires set and rise;Ye, till some lordlier lyric handWeave the beloved brows their crown,At the beloved feet lie down.

O, whatsoever of life or light10Love hath to give you, what of mightOr heart or hope is yours to live,I charge you take in trust to giveFor very love's sake, in whose sight,Through poise of hours alternative15And seasons plumed with light or night,Ye live and move and have your breathTo sing with on the ridge of death.

I charge you faint not all night throughFor love's sake that was breathed on you20To be to you as wings and feetFor travel, and as blood to heatAnd sense of spirit to renewAnd bloom of fragrance to keep sweetAnd fire of purpose to keep true25The life, if life in such things be,That I would give you forth of me.

Out where the breath of war may bear,Out in the rank moist reddened airThat sounds and smells of death, and hath30No light but death's upon its pathSeen through the black wind's tangled hair,I send you past the wild time's wrathTo find his face who bade you bearFruit of his seed to faith and love,35That he may take the heart thereof.

By day or night, by sea or street,Fly till ye find and clasp his feetAnd kiss as worshippers who bringToo much love on their lips to sing,40But with hushed heads accept and greetThe presence of some heavenlier thingIn the near air; so may ye meetHis eyes, and droop not utterlyFor shame's sake at the light you see.45

Not utterly struck spiritlessFor shame's sake and unworthinessOf these poor forceless hands that comeEmpty, these lips that should be dumb,This love whose seal can but impress50These weak word-offerings wearisomeWhose blessings have not strength to blessNor lightnings fire to burn up aughtNor smite with thunders of their thought.

One thought they have, even love; one light,55Truth, that keeps clear the sun by night;One chord, of faith as of a lyre;One heat, of hope as of a fire;One heart, one music, and one might,One flame, one altar, and one choir;60And one man's living head in sightWho said, when all time's sea was foam,"Let there be Rome"--and there was Rome.

As a star set in space for tokenLike a live word of God's mouth spoken,65Visible sound, light audible,In the great darkness thick as hellA stanchless flame of love unsloken,A sign to conquer and compel,A law to stand in heaven unbroken70Whereby the sun shines, and wherethroughTime's eldest empires are made new;

So rose up on our generationsThat light of the most ancient nations,Law, life, and light, on the world's way,75The very God of very day,The sun-god; from their star-like stationsFar down the night in disarrayFled, crowned with fires of tribulations,The suns of sunless years, whose light80And life and law were of the night.

The naked kingdoms quenched and starkDrave with their dead things down the dark,Helmless; their whole world, throne by throne,Fell, and its whole heart turned to stone,85Hopeless; their hands that touched our arkWithered; and lo, aloft, alone,On time's white waters man's one bark,Where the red sundawn's open eyeLit the soft gulf of low green sky.90

So for a season pilotedIt sailed the sunlight, and struck redWith fire of dawn reverberateThe wan face of incumbent fateThat paused half pitying overhead95And almost had foregone the freightOf those dark hours the next day bredFor shame, and almost had forswornService of night for love of morn.

Then broke the whole night in one blow,100Thundering; then all hell with one throeHeaved, and brought forth beneath the strokeDeath; and all dead things moved and wokeThat the dawn's arrows had brought low,At the great sound of night that broke105Thundering, and all the old world-wide woe;And under night's loud-sounding domeMen sought her, and she was not Rome.

Still with blind hands and robes blood-wetNight hangs on heaven, reluctant yet,110With black blood dripping from her eyesOn the soiled lintels of the skies,With brows and lips that thirst and threat,Heart-sick with fear lest the sun rise,And aching with her fires that set,115And shuddering ere dawn bursts her bars,Burns out with all her beaten stars.

In this black wind of war they flyNow, ere that hour be in the skyThat brings back hope, and memory back,120And light and law to lands that lack;That spiritual sweet hour wherebyThe bloody-handed night and blackShall be cast out of heaven to die;Kingdom by kingdom, crown by crown,125The fires of darkness are blown down.

Yet heavy, grievous yet the weightSits on us of imperfect fate.From wounds of other days and deedsStill this day's breathing body bleeds;130Still kings for fear and slaves for hateSow lives of men on earth like seedsIn the red soil they saturate;And we, with faces eastward set,Stand sightless of the morning yet.135

And many for pure sorrow's sakeLook back and stretch back hands to takeGifts of night's giving, ease and sleep,Flowers of night's grafting, strong to steepThe soul in dreams it will not break,140Songs of soft hours that sigh and sweepIts lifted eyelids nigh to wakeWith subtle plumes and lulling breathThat soothe its weariness to death.

And many, called of hope and pride,145Fall ere the sunrise from our side.Fresh lights and rumours of fresh famesThat shift and veer by night like flames,Shouts and blown trumpets, ghosts that glideCalling, and hail them by dead names,150Fears, angers, memories, dreams divideSpirit from spirit, and wear outStrong hearts of men with hope and doubt.

Till time beget and sorrow bearThe soul-sick eyeless child despair,155That comes among us, mad and blind,With counsels of a broken mind,Tales of times dead and woes that were,And, prophesying against mankind,Shakes out the horror of her hair160To take the sunlight with its coilsAnd hold the living soul in toils.

By many ways of death and moodsSouls pass into their servitudes.Their young wings weaken, plume by plume165Drops, and their eyelids gather gloomAnd close against man's frauds and feuds,And their tongues call they know not whomTo help in their vicissitudes;For many slaveries are, but one170Liberty, single as the sun.

One light, one law, that burns up strife,And one sufficiency of life.Self-stablished, the sufficing soulHears the loud wheels of changes roll,175Sees against man man bare the knife,Sees the world severed, and is whole;Sees force take dowerless fraud to wife,And fear from fraud's incestuous bedCrawl forth and smite his father dead:180

Sees death made drunk with war, sees timeWeave many-coloured crime with crime,State overthrown on ruining state,And dares not be disconsolate.Only the soul hath feet to climb,185Only the soul hath room to wait,Hath brows and eyes to hold sublimeAbove all evil and all good,All strength and all decrepitude.

She only, she since earth began,190The many-minded soul of man,From one incognizable rootThat bears such divers-coloured fruit,Hath ruled for blessing or for banThe flight of seasons and pursuit;195She regent, she republican,With wide and equal eyes and wingsBroods on things born and dying things.

Even now for love or doubt of usThe hour intense and hazardous200Hangs high with pinions vibratingWhereto the light and darkness cling,Dividing the dim season thus,And shakes from one ambiguous wingShadow, and one is luminous,205And day falls from it; so the pastTorments the future to the last.

And we that cannot hear or seeThe sounds and lights of liberty,The witness of the naked God210That treads on burning hours unshodWith instant feet unwounded; weThat can trace only where he trodBy fire in heaven or storm at sea,Not know the very present whole215And naked nature of the soul;

We that see wars and woes and kings,And portents of enormous things,Empires, and agonies, and slaves,And whole flame of town-swallowing graves;220That hear the harsh hours clap sharp wingsAbove the roar of ranks like waves,From wreck to wreck as the world swings;Know but that men there are who seeAnd hear things other far than we.225

By the light sitting on their brows,The fire wherewith their presence glows,The music falling with their feet,The sweet sense of a spirit sweetThat with their speech or motion grows230And breathes and burns men's hearts with heat;By these signs there is none but knowsMen who have life and grace to give,Men who have seen the soul and live.

By the strength sleeping in their eyes,235The lips whereon their sorrow liesSmiling, the lines of tears unshed,The large divine look of one deadThat speaks out of the breathless skiesIn silence, when the light is shed240Upon man's soul of memories;The supreme look that sets love free,The look of stars and of the sea;

By the strong patient godhead seenImplicit in their mortal mien,245The conscience of a God held stillAnd thunders ruled by their own willAnd fast-bound fires that might burn cleanThis worldly air that foul things fill,And the afterglow of what has been,250That, passing, shows us without wordWhat they have seen, what they have heard,

By all these keen and burning signsThe spirit knows them and divines.In bonds, in banishment, in grief,255Scoffed at and scourged with unbelief,Foiled with false trusts and thwart designs,Stripped of green days and hopes in leaf,Their mere bare body of glory shinesHigher, and man gazing surelier sees260What light, what comfort is of these.

So I now gazing; till the senseBeing set on fire of confidenceStrains itself sunward, feels out farBeyond the bright and morning star,265Beyond the extreme wave's refluence,To where the fierce first sunbeams areWhose fire intolerant and intenseAs birthpangs whence day burns to beParts breathless heaven from breathing sea.270

I see not, know not, and am blest,Master, who know that thou knowest,Dear lord and leader, at whose handThe first days and the last days stand,With scars and crowns on head and breast,275That fought for love of the sweet landOr shall fight in her latter quest;All the days armed and girt and crownedWhose glories ring thy glory round.

Thou sawest, when all the world was blind,280The light that should be of mankind,The very day that was to be;And how shalt thou not sometime seeThy city perfect to thy mindStand face to living face with thee,285And no miscrowned man's head behind;The hearth of man, the human home,The central flame that shall be Rome?

As one that ere a June day riseMakes seaward for the dawn, and tries290The water with delighted limbsThat taste the sweet dark sea, and swimsRight eastward under strengthening skies,And sees the gradual rippling rimsOf waves whence day breaks blossom-wise295Take fire ere light peer well above,And laughs from all his heart with love;

And softlier swimming with raised headFeels the full flower of morning shedAnd fluent sunrise round him rolled300That laps and laves his body boldWith fluctuant heaven in water's stead,And urgent through the growing goldStrikes, and sees all the spray flash red,And his soul takes the sun, and yearns305For joy wherewith the sea's heart burns;

So the soul seeking through the darkHeavenward, a dove without an ark,Transcends the unnavigable seaOf years that wear out memory;310So calls, a sunward-singing lark,In the ear of souls that should be free;So points them toward the sun for markWho steer not for the stress of waves,And seek strange helmsmen, and are slaves.315

For if the swimmer's eastward eyeMust see no sunrise--must put byThe hope that lifted him and ledOnce, to have light about his head,To see beneath the clear low sky320The green foam-whitened wave wax redAnd all the morning's banner fly -Then, as earth's helpless hopes go down,Let earth's self in the dark tides drown.

Yea, if no morning must behold325Man, other than were they now cold,And other deeds than past deeds done,Nor any near or far-off sunSalute him risen and sunlike-souled,Free, boundless, fearless, perfect, one,330Let man's world die like worlds of old,And here in heaven's sight only beThe sole sun on the worldless sea.